This dataset contains information about the number of bacterial colonies recovered from plastics beads that were incubated in a 96-well plate for 24 hours at 37 degrees Celsius. Each well in the plate had 1 bead composed of polycaprolactone in it and 150 microlitres of Isopropyl β- d-1-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG) induced bacterial cell culture. Three replicates were performed. The bacterial cells had been modified to harbour plasmids that encoded genes to trigger the cells to form biofilms, the expression of these genes was induced using IPTG. An empty plasmid was used as the control. The work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (Grant NE/X010902/1), as part of an experiment looking into using synthetic biology to manipulate bacterial social behaviours to maximise the microbial degradation of environmental waste plastics. Full details about this nonGeographicDataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/eef3a20c-cb4c-415f-b4be-4d1c31fb6015